NBC's Mike Tirico Talks Ryder Cup, Match Play Advice From Tiger

The Ryder Cup kicks off next week at Hazeltine National in Minnesota, and NBC's Mike Tirico couldn't be more excited.

Tirico, NBC’s host for the event, joined the GOLF.com Podcast to discuss the Ryder Cup and his career as a golf broadcaster, which includes discussing match play strategies with Tiger Woods.

"I was really lucky to spend some time around Tiger ... back in the early- to mid-2000s, about a lot of the things that match play brings," Tirico said. "I look for those things still in matches as you watch one play out.

"... It was 'How do you control the match, no matter what the score is,'" Tirico continued. "It could be the pace at which you’re playing or the pace at which you’re walking…a variety of things that don’t come up in every match, but that come up in your rolodex. ... I asked him what made him so good at match play when he went through the years winning the (U.S.) Junior Am and the U.S. Am. He went into some of those details about how match play is so different from stroke play."

That specific part of the conversation begins at the 21:01 mark in the podcast. For more from Tirico on Woods’s function as an assistant captain, why golfers are Tirico’s favorite athletes to cover and why some of his career success is due to a cartoon rabbit, check out the podcast below.